How do I make my Apple Watch pair to my phone if my watch doesn’t display the pairing animation?

my activity wasn’t syncing from my watch to my phone so I unpaired the two. Now, my watch seems to be running but it’s not paired with my phone. I don’t want to erase the Apple Watch cause I have important activity saved on it that I don’t want to lose in a reset. I’ve tried powering off and such but nothing is working. I can’t even do a software update on my watch because it requires permission from my phone which it is not connected to.